How to use Feedback to achieve success in life?

Well, if you are facing these challenges, then you are not alone! Many people face these challenges. However, successful people overcome these challenges, utilizing multiple channels at their disposal.

One such channel is seeking feedback from the right person to come up with the correct solution.

Feedback from others will bring to you a different perspective on the problem. This could help you identify the root cause and accordingly plan the corrective action.

Most successful people use Feedback to achieve success in life. Why don’t you give it a try?

Use Feedback to achieve success in life. Why?

You would observe that any intelligent system incorporates a feedback loop so that it can continuously improve its performance levels. It does so, by learning from the feedback it receives and taking the required corrective action.

Any retail business, always tries to seek customer feedback on every transaction. It does so to improve the customer experience.

Banks, have feedback channels built in each of their customer interactions. They do this to learn from customer interaction and improve their services to them.

All social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. have the provision for people to put comments. If the feedback is relevant, then the owner can learn from it and use this to improve his next online post.

Take your workplace as an example- you have regular performance reviews with your manager. You receive feedback on your performance, which helps in getting further success in your career.

I guess, with these observations, you are clear that feedback is important to improve yourself. This helps you define success in life and keep you on the path to achieve this.

Feedback vs Comments

In your daily life, you come across comments and opinions from multiple people via verbal interaction, emails, social media, etc.

All of this may not be relevant feedback to you. It may just reflect another point of view, personal bias, opinion, etc. and may not be relevant to you in your success path.

Many of this is involuntary and unsolicited and can come at any time. In the free internet world, you can have only limited control over this.

You must be judicious in filtering out the relevant feedback.

Some of the comments may be harsh or vicious and can dishearten you.

Some of them could misguide you and derail you from the success path you have defined for yourself.

However, sometimes relevant and genuine feedback also comes out which helps you. It is this part that you should focus on, and discard all others, to keep yourself on the right track on the success path.

You need to seek feedback.

 You must always keep in mind that you need to seek Genuine Feedback. It does not come free. You must make a sincere effort to seek out the right people who can give you appropriate feedback.

Depending on the context that you need help with, it could be different people. It could be people who know you and are close to you. Or it could be someone who you interact in your daily life. It could also be someone knowledgeable in the area that you are looking for help

You must choose the right person to get the correct feedback to propel yourself forward on the climb to success in life.

There are several sources of feedback available to you.

1. Your Immediate family members:

Most people often ignore this channel for feedback, around things that can help you in the path to success in life. However, I feel that is an important and useful channel for feedback if used properly. After all who else will know you better than your immediate family? They will also have your best interests in mind and will give you honest feedback.

Immediate family includes your spouse/life partner, children, parents, siblings, and other relatives.

This is a very close relationship so there could be more comments than actual feedback coming in. There could also be an element of personal bias or opinion that could also play its part. So, it is important to filter ‘in’ only the useful and relevant content out of these interactions. m

The immediate family may not be useful in situations, which require help from an expert in that area. The experts could be financial advisers, lawyers, doctors, etc whose expert opinion can help you with very specific feedback.

2. Your Friends:

All of us have lots of acquaintances whom we interact in our daily life but only a few of them qualify to be our true friends. Other than family it is with our close friends that we spend a lot of our time. You are very comfortable to talk openly with them about your struggles in life. Sometimes you may not be able to discuss certain things with your immediate family, but friends could be of help. Your friends know about you, care about you so they can give you honest feedback which would be in your best interest.

3. Your Colleagues:

Apart from family and friends most of the time at work is spent with colleagues. If you work in a large organization, there could be interactions with many colleagues. However, we have frequent interactions with a limited set of people only. These people will know about your professional struggles and challenges and can offer good feedback to you on this front. Of course, there could be an element of professional rivalry or other things that come in the way. So, we need to choose the right people who could help with relevant feedback.

4. Your Boss:

Unless you run your own business or heading a business, there will be a formal organization structure at your workplace. And you will have a supervisor whom you will report to on the professional front. You will be in constant touch with your reporting manager daily and he/she will know you well on the work front. Many times, you also discuss the personal and professional issues which hamper your work and seek guidance.

Based on the career movements the reporting relationships do change over time and you may have a new boss. However, if the relationship has been good, the camaraderie is still retained, and this could evolve into a great feedback channel. The caveat though is, this is a formal relationship and there are boundaries on what can be discussed or what cannot. Again, it varies on a case to case basis and can be leveraged appropriately.

5. Subject Matter experts:

There are many other situations in life where you need guidance or feedback from the subject matter experts in that area. These could be professional service providers like lawyers, doctors, financial advisers, etc. who have expertise in specific areas and can help to provide relevant feedback. Many of these are on a paid basis based on the services you require. However, they could provide some amount of free initial guidance as well depending on how you have acquired the connection with them. It is very important though that you do your research and choose the right person. This person should have the right credibility and specific expertise to help with your specific needs.

6. Mentor:

Most successful people do have mentors who guide them in their life journeys on the professional front. These mentors could be people who have achieved success aligned with your life goals. You hold them in high regard and feel any guidance they provide can help you achieve success on specific goals. This could be a great feedback channel to help you. However, you need to carefully choose your mentors based on what you need help with and need to reach out to them. You need to respect their time and guidance while also taking appropriate action to show this. Most mentors would be happy and encouraged to help you more if they find you are seriously on the feedback they provide.

7. Coach:

This is usually a paid engagement where you hire a coach to help you set the right goals and plan to achieve these. He / She could also help you to discover solutions to overcome the challenges that you are facing on the way. A coach can keep you on track on the goals you have identified yourself and help you to make any change required as per the progress. However, a coach can help you only as per your commitment to the relationship. You should be serious about this and take all the actions that you decide with a coach’s assistance.

To understand how a coach can make you successful please click.

Summary

In the end I would like to stress on the importance of feedback in your climb to success in life. Seeking feedback from the right person plays a very important role on your success path. It is also important to distinguish between feedback and comments and filter in the relevant content. I also discussed the different sources of feedback available to you.

What are you waiting for ? Go ahead and use Feedback to achieve success in life

Please provide your feedback on this post in the comments section. I will be happy to receive your views on this topic. If there are any specific queries or you need any help please do connect with me.

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